30 October 2014

Tonight I went to two author events, one after another, both about female fighters.

One was Jill Lepore’s talk at the Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge about The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Comics fans already know about the unorthodox sexual habits of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, but Lepore has also linked Marston to Margaret Sanger and her circle of women‘s-rights activists.

The second was Alex Myers’s talk at the Old South Meeting House in Boston about his novel Revolutionary, based on the life of Deborah Sampson, soldier in the Continental Army at the end of the Revolutionary War. I was pleased to learn that Myers is another example of the generous mentorship of Alfred F. Young, author of the Sampson biography Masquerade.

About the Author

J. L. BELL is a writer and reader of fantasy literature for children. His favorite authors include L. Frank Baum, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper. He is an Assistant Regional Advisor in the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, and was the editor of Oziana, creative magazine of the International Wizard of Oz Club, from 2004 to 2010.

Living in Massachusetts, Bell also writes about the American Revolution at Boston 1775.